Virtual reality (VR), oddly enough, is not immune to the problems that arise in practical reality. Just ask would-be fans of the Oculus Rift headset, many — possibly most — of whom are still waiting for their US$600 gadgets more than four weeks after they started shipping.
The delay, naturally, has sparked online grousing and even some data-based activism, including the creation of a crowdsourced spreadsheet for tracking who received their prized VR gear and when. Some longtime supporters of Oculus VR Inc have declared themselves alienated by the company’s inability to deliver; others have defected to rival VR systems, or are at least considering it.
Christian Cantrell, a software engineer and science-fiction author in Sterling, Virginia, put in his pre-order about 15 minutes after Oculus started accepting them in January — and is still waiting.
Cantrell said it has been a “bummer,” because he passed up buying a rival headset, HTC Corp’s (宏達電) Vive headset, hoping to be part of a VR “renaissance” with Rift.
“I have been kind of like an Oculus believer, but if they bump it again, I might just order a Vive,” he said.
It is too soon to say how the delays would affect Oculus, much less the overall acceptance of VR, a technology that submerges users in realistic artificial worlds. In other contexts, big companies such as Apple Inc have managed to weather shortages and shipping delays for products such as the Apple Watch and its new iPhone SE.
However, some find the Rift delays intolerable, especially given that Oculus is no fledgling startup, but part of Facebook Inc — the social network bought it two years ago for US$2 billion.
“There is an element of inexcusable incompetence going on,” said J.P. Gownder, a Forrester Research analyst, who placed his pre-order in the first 10 minutes, but does not expect his Rift until the middle of this month.
Experienced hardware manufacturers would have set up suppliers months or years in advance to avoid these types of problems, Gownder said. The fact that Oculus managed to bungle its launch with more than three years to prepare, plus the backing of Facebook, is “scandalous,” he added.
Oculus, which has blamed the delays on an “unexpected component shortage,” declined to comment on specifics. It said in a statement that it has moved to address the shortage and expects deliveries to accelerate in coming weeks. By way of apology, Oculus said it would offer free shipping to customers who ordered before April 1.
Few have been as disappointed as some of the company’s earliest supporters. In January, Oculus founder Palmer Luckey announced that 5,600 of the company’s first Kickstarter backers would be eligible for a free headset. He then tweeted on the eve of first deliveries that the gifts would “start arriving” two days before others, giving the impression Kickstarter backers would get theirs first.
It did not happen. Unhappy customers gathered on Reddit to complain and to figure out where they stood in line; one poster cataloged the frustration on a crowdsourced spreadsheet. While not necessarily representative of the entire Oculus customer base, that data showed that of the 131 early Kickstarter backers who submitted responses, only 28 report receiving a unit. Of 1,399 pre-order customers, just 165 said they got a Rift.
The virtual reality boom is just getting going and the competition is growing. Sony Corp is to release its PlayStation VR headset later this year. Google is expected to expand on its primitive Cardboard viewer, and recent Apple acquisitions suggest that it might also be jumping into the field soon.
The Rift is losing some of its first-mover appeal. Some games originally designed to be Oculus exclusives have now been hacked to work on the HTC Vive, which launched about a week after the Rift, but has not experienced shipping delays. Customers who bought Rift games before receiving their headset can now get digital keys so they can play the games in real reality, on a regular PC.
Bill Ellis, a 30-year-old computer engineer in Houston, Texas, has been playing with his Vive since it arrived on April 5, and might not keep the Rift after it arrives. He said his plan was always to buy both, and sell the one that did not live up to expectations.
“The one that has not shown up is the one that has not lived up to my expectations so far,” Ellis said.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day